China Environmental Law

I just finished reviewing the US-China Joint Clean Energy Agreements, and I barely have the motivation to type.  I know how much effort people of goodwill put into the work of securing substantive agreements in these areas.  The Chinese side while not positively obstructionist was, for the most part, not very interested in engaging in discussions.  This was a rational response; prior US-China joint ventures in the energy arena foisted on the Chinese have not, on the whole, yielded much progress.  Through sheer perseverance, however, groups like the US-China Clean Energy Forum (CEF) have developed a credible and ambitious agenda for joint cooperation between China and the US with buy ins from both sides.  Perhaps this buy-in was not from the right governmental players (because what we were handed on Tuesday were mere shadows of the CEF agreements), but if anyone is to blame for that it the US administration who failed to provide the necessary support for this effort which was generously endorsed and promoted by Senators Cantwell and Kerry.

The Tuesday agreements (billed by some as substantial progress) are basically agreements to agree to reach agreements to share information.  They are vague proto-agreements.  Think I exaggerate?  Here are two of the four provisions from the U.S.-China Electric Vehicles (EV) Initiative:

Joint demonstrations. The Initiative will link more than a dozen cities with electric vehicle demonstration programs in both countries. Paired cities will collect and share data on charging patterns, driving experiences, grid integration, consumer preferences and other topics. The demonstrations will help facilitate large-scale introduction of this technology.

Joint technical roadmap. A U.S.-China task force will create a multi-year roadmap to identify R&D needs as well as issues related to the manufacture, introduction and use of electric vehicles. The roadmap will be made widely available to assist not just U.S. and Chinese developers, but also the global automotive industry. It will be updated regularly to reflect advances in technology and the evolution of the marketplace.

The final provision of this initiative, I kid you not, calls for developing brochures to boost “public understanding of electric vehicle technologies,” and holding an EV conference once a year.  The remaining provision could have some practical impact, it commits the countries to “explore development of joint product and testing standards for electric vehicles.”

All of the agreements display a similar lack of ambition and urgency.

Compare the above provisions with this one from the proposed CEF initiatives: “aggressively roll out infrastructure for several cities in each country to accommodate PHEVs and EVs. Set an ambitious goal of at least 100,000 vehicles for each city by 2015.”

Let’s return to the Tuesday agreement’s EV “technical roadmap.”  If the history of US-China joint agreements is our guide, here’s how work on it will progress: it will take at least six months for each side to put together their panels of experts who will discuss how such a roadmap should be formulated; the panels will need at least another six months to meet and discuss this matter jointly, then another six months to write up their separate findings; after that they will exchange proposals, and it will take another six months. . . . well, you get the picture.

We don’t have the time these agreements contemplate to come to grips with this problem.  If China has not significantly ratcheted up its carbon mitigation efforts within the next five years, the costs of reducing its carbon emissions to necessary levels sky rocket, as the McKinsey study and China’s own calculations demonstrate.

The private sector is to be congratulated.  They have filled the gap left by the governments, and have started their own collaborative efforts with Chinese counterparts.  The good old EPA also deserves a round of applause.  They have been working tirelessly in their quiet way on things that really make an impact in China.  It is their agreement to help build carbon emission measurement capacity that is perhaps the most significant of those announced on Tuesday.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a copy of it.  The Washington Post has reported on it, however.

The mere fact that these agreements were issued separately by individual US administrative agencies indicates a business as usual approach to this issue.  We need one master agreement called the China-US Climate Change Initiative that covers all these items.  We need the Vice President in charge of the efforts for the US and Vice President or Vice Premier Li in charge of the effort for China.  Let’s stop congratulating ourselves on how far we’ve come, and dedicate ourselves to closing the substantial implementation gap that remains.